For there was, indeed, when he probed it, a little spark of a presence.

“Do I know you?” he asked, for the face seemed familiar to him, and the women made a little bow like willows in a gale.

“We served in the Zeide.”

“In this room?” he asked, for suddenly thatwas the point of familiarity… he recalled women gathered together about sorcerous objects: Lady Orien and all her company, with Hasufin’s presence attempting the breached wards.

The gaze that looked up at him, suddenly direct, was dark and wide and terrified.

“You werehere,” he accused her.

“I served the Aswydds,” came the faint response. “But all the while I served the gods, by your leave, lord. As does my sister. Let us go.”

A lit straw, that was all the woman’s wizardry was, the sort a wisp of wind might cause to flare or extinguish altogether… and was not that the danger in what Emuin called hedge-wizards… that they might set a whole field alight?

“What is your name?” he asked, holding her with his stare.

“Faiseth,” she said, or that was what he thought he heard. Faiseth. It seemed to echo here and there at once, and now she knew she was observed. So did her sister.

A presence flitted past him, sought concealment in the gray space. A hare in a burrow, the woman was, heart beating quickly, and her sister with her. She had not wanted this errand. The lord abbot had not wanted it either, and the abbot commanded. So much he knew in an instant. And the other woman…

—“Pei’razen.”

The woman looked at him, stricken, addressed in the gray space as well as the world.

—“ Orien’s servants.”

“The gods’ servants, yourservants, at your will, my lord.”

He considered the women, and the knowledge he had, as thorough as if it had Unfolded to him. The women concealed nothing, to the walls of their souls they concealed nothing.

It was worth knowing the nature of such servants. It was worth remembering. Such as a lord could lay a ward withina soul, he laid one, sure and fast, so neither woman should betray the house, or him, without his attention, not in all they ever did. They were his.

And sharply a breath came in, and the younger covered her mouth with her hands as if her soul were trying to escape. The other pressed a hand to her heart.

“I’ve not harmed you,” he said, “but you touched the wards of this room on that night, and now I’ve laid new ones.” He abhorred what they had done, but he saw in them now a small, a wavering hope, a desire of life, of favor, of something he had to give that these woman desperately, fervently lacked and adored and sought with all their life.

“What do you wish of me?”

“Nothing, Your Grace.”

“That’s not so,” he said. “What do you wish that I might give you?”

“To be the gods^ true servant,” she said, then, and that was false.

“The truth,” he said, and took it, not that it was right to do, but that they sought mercy, and there was one safe way to pour it out to them. They wished to have skill, to be greater than they were. They wished to be regarded by one and all, feared, for it was fear they had understood.

“You need not,” he said, “be afraid of anyone. You need never be afraid.” He held out his hand, and took cold, thin fingers he could break with the pressure of his hand. He wished her welland wished her sister the same, and she began to tremble.

“Master Emuin would tell you,” he said, “and will tell you, when you go to him, that breaking things is no help.” He warmed the woman’s hand in his, and reached for her sister’s—so slight a pressure, her fingers, against his, as if he held one of his birds. “Don’t do anything so foolish as that again. Don’t curse. Don’t fear anything.”

He let go their hands, but now they tried, in that other place, to hold to him, as if he, after all, was what they had wanted.

“Tell the abbot I thanked him,” he said. “And go to master Emuin. He’ll know all you’ve done. Don’t be afraid of him. Don’t be afraid.”

One and the other, they backed away, wanting his forgiveness, striving to reach into the gray space and not to let him go; but he had no wish to be their answer: he pushed them gently out into the world and shut it as it were a door.

He could not be Mauryl. He was never made to be Mauryl, or Emuin, who could teach. He delayed for a glance at their departure and said nothing to Uwen’s look at him, before he added the letters to the pile.

The darkness had not even bothered to devour these sisters. It had had other prey in mind, and their understanding had never told them their danger.

Meanwhile, while the letters accumulated in lords’ hands, priests had contended with curses while Hasufin prowled the wards like the wolf at the fold… never ask what curses the Quinalt patriarch might have laid on them all a matter of days ago, before he left; but he had felt no trace of it. The wards of the Zeide were sound. The harm a priest could do seemed not to have touched what he guarded.

He went back to his burden of letters and confessions, his accounts and his requests, and his small stacks of coins.

By ranks and rows they stood on the desk to remind him, Uwen’s lesson.

By such means he understood the simpler things that did not Unfold to him, or leap full-blown into his sight in the gray place. The lord of Amefel needed such advice, and had before him the correspondence of the Bryaltines with the enemy, the earls with the enemy, and the earls with the falsified accounts.

Now they began all to tell the truth.

Even Lady Orien’s servants had told him their small truth at the last, and left running.

Chapter 8

A letter from Tristen and a letter from Anwyll arrived on Cefwyn’s desk in the same packet. Idrys brought them, on a cold, rainy night. Something close to ice was spattering the windows of the study. Water stood in beads on Idrys’ black armor, from a recent trip outside.

“Two letters,” Idrys said. “And a bit of news I fear my lord king won’t like. The Amefin patriarch has just arrived at the Quinaltine, with four Guelen guardsmen, and on a lame horse.”

“The Amefinpatriarch,” Cefwyn said in wonder. Nothing he could imagine could deter him from the letter he had in hand, but that did divert him a moment. “Why? Did Tristen send him?”

“With guards that haven’t reported to me,” Idrys said, “no. Without a message to me, no. And not wearing the Guelen red, no. Lord Tristen didn’t send them. One man arrived in his proper colors, and came to his officer. The others I would call deserters.”

“With the Amefin patriarch.” Worse and worse news. It was not a flow of information this evening, it was a torrent becoming a flood, and by Idrys’ face, he had only part of it in hand, in these letters. Somethingwas going on that involved the Quinalt. And a man who had no reason to be running errands, at his age, and who was not likely to be running to higher authority on any ordinary matter.

With Tristen in charge in Amefel… was any matter of religion ordinary?

“Report,” he said. “Master crow, don’t deliver me this diced in pieces. I want to know. Report, or hie you downstairs and find out.”

Idrys did not go. He loomed, a standing blackness against the dull, glistening color of the stained-glass window. Night was outside. But a little of it had gotten in with the Lord Commander, as if it were one of those shadows Tristen talked about, the cold spots his grandfather had claimed to feel on the stairs.

The world had been moderately ordered until Idrys came. Now there was no likelihood he would leave this office before dawn.

“The one man,” Idrys said, “the honest man, to all appearances… that one pleads a sick mother. To deliver another piece of unpleasant news, the captainof the Guelen garrison is one that went into the Quinaltine, and my lord king will recall he was captain during your tenure, during Parsynan’s…”